In the news, we have a consortium of French publishers, which somehow includes several major U.S. corporations (Google, Microsoft), attempting to sue AdBlock Plus developer Eyeo, a German firm with developers around the world. I have no idea of the legal basis for their case, but it’s all about the money. AdBlock Plus and the closely related AdBlock are among the most popular Chrome extensions, by far, and publishers will no doubt claim huge monetary damages around presumed “lost income”.[Read more…]

On Tuesday the State of California sent a letter to the Bitcoin Foundation, saying that the Foundation might be in violation of California’s law against running an unregistered money transmission business. The letter isn’t important in the grand scheme of things—it’s clear that the Bitcoin Foundation isn’t transmitting money—but it does raise the obvious question of how governments will try to regulate the use of Bitcoin.[Read more…]

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